Everyone I know is already passing this around, but I don't care, I want to quote it myself because it's just that awesome. "The newly published DSM-5" seen as "a classic dsytopian novel."
The narrative voice of the book affects a tone of clinical detachment,
one in which drinking coffee and paranoid-type schizophrenia can be
discussed with the same flat tone. Under the pretense of dispassion this
voice embodies a whole raft of terrifying preconceptions. Just like the
neurological disorders that appear at the start of the book, mental
illnesses appear like lightning bolts, with all their aura of divine
randomness. Even when etiologies are mentioned they’re invariably held
to be either genetic or refer to other illnesses such as substance abuse
disorders. At no point is there any sense that madness might be
socially informed, that the forms it takes might be a reflection of the
influences and pressures of the world that surrounds us.
descensus Averno facilis est